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Comment by rip747 | Hacker News Reader

what you describe is emotionally based, not chemically based. There is a HUGE difference.

That's a false dichotomy. Ultimately all thoughts / brain function rely on "chemicals". The idea of purely "chemical" mental distress is also severely strained - consider "there is a 0% chance your current feelings are influenced by your environment / past".

It's all a bit more of a spectrum.

There is serious money behind the chemical mental-distress-as-an-illness interpretation. If it's a medical problem then you need a medical solution. Anti-depressants anyone? They are being taken in such vast quantities they are starting to poison the water. [1]

[1] http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21882-antidepressants-...

no... what you've saying is false. There is a HUGE difference in feeling sad about a traumatic or past event versus the chemicals in your brain not working properly.

also this conversation is about true clinical depression and the difference between it and just feeling sad; it's not about some conspiracy theory of how every doctor wants us to be on meds or the fact that flushing medication down the toilet is poising our water supply.

please stay on topic if you want to continue the converation

It's a little brash to dismiss published evidence as a conspiracy theory. You may think it flawed but then please at least make an intelligent criticism.

Who gets to decide what is "feeling sad" with a cause and what is idiopathic "chemical malfunction". Care to offer any references? Objective diagnostics?

I included the bit about antidepressants to caution swallowing the prevailing medical model hook line and sinker with out pause for thought as to it's assumptions. Pretty sure that's on topic.

its simple. if my wife doesn't take her medication she spirals down into a deep depression. it doesn't matter if she's at (what everyone would say) the happiest moments of her life, she's going to get depressed. now flip that when she's taking her meds, she is able to handle and snap out of it if things aren't going so well like any other normal person would. She still gets sad and feels bad, but _she gets over it_, where as if she's off her meds, _she doesn't_. i'm involved with this and see it on a daily basis.

But just because it's true for your wife doesn't mean it's unequivocally true for everyone else. You can't make that kind of sweeping statement.

Arguably emotion is just the perception of underlying chemicals. I agree, it's too difficult to separate the two, and it's hardly necessary for treatment. Add to this the fact that emotions can cause brain damage (it's called PTSD) and the two become impossible to separate.

So... there may not actually be a huge difference in feeling sad about trauma and chemical problems. Not all chemical problems are genetic.

Please stop.

You are promoting a stigmatising, out of date, notion of mental illness which is based on ignorance. You are suggesting (whether you know it or not) that some depression is "real" (and based on a chemical imbalance) and some depression is not real (and is not based on a chemical imbalance).

This is unhelpful, and potentially dangerous.

It leads people to think that medication is the only way to treat depression. Medication is not the only way to treat depression; medication alone is unlikely to be much use for long term resilience.

The "Chemical imbalance" model is too simple and has too many flaws to be much use.

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